The Great Depression

The Crash > Economy Compared to Television, 1929

The Crash > “It’s so nice to have Daddy home all the time now,” Life, 1930

Unemployment > Deportation of Mexicans, 1931

Unemployment > Jobs Listed by Race, 1939

Poverty > Hooverville, 1933

Hoover > “We can do it!” 1931

Hoover > “Fundamentally, the ship was sound,” New Yorker, 1932

The New Deal > Historiographic Debates

• 1952, Herbert Hoover • New Deal failed because it “attempted to collectivize the American system of life.”

• 1940s-1960s, “liberal consensus” historians• New Deal was a “pragmatic” revolution that expanded the role of the federal government in American life.

• mid-1960s, “New Left” historians• New Deal was fundamentally conservative, it could but failed to redistribute power in American society; it protected American capitalism.

• 1970s-2000s, contemporary historians• New Deal could not have done more than it did, because of conservative Congress, the lack of adequate government bureaucracy, and localist and antistatist political culture.

The New Deal > Stages

• 1932 - FDR elected• First New Deal (“the hundred days”)

• 1934 - Strike wave

• 1934 - Leftist Democrats win the majority in congressional elections

• Second New Deal (“the second hundred days”)

• 1935 - Supreme Court unanimously declares NRA unconstitutional

• 1936 - FDR reelected in a landslide

• 1937 - Court-packing• FDR proposes but fails to implement unpopular Supreme Court reform

• 1938 - Republicans and conservative Democrats regain seats in the House

• As a reform movement, New Deal is over

New Deal > Private FDR Photograph, 1930s

New Deal > Public FDR Photographs, 1930s

New Deal > FDR Giving a Fireside Chat, 1937

New Deal > Banking Crisis Advertisement, 1931

New Deal > One Hundred Days Cartoon, Lynn Item, 1933

New Deal > One Hundred Days Cartoon, Houston Post, 1933

New Deal > TVA: Big Ridge Dam, TN

New Deal > Song from Thanks a Million, 1935

They started up the NRA to keep the big bad wolf awayThen FDR began to be a headache to the GOPNow that codes are everywhere we’ve got initials in our hairThe farmer’s IOU is O.K. since Congress formed the AAAThe CCC chops down a tree and sells it pronto FOB …The RFC and NHA led millions to the AAAThe AAA has crops it cuts and all of us are going nuts!

---NRA - National Recovery AdministrationAAA - Agricultural Adjustment AdministrationCCC - Civilian Conservation CorpsRFC - Reconstruction Finance CorporationNHA - National Housing AuthorityFDR - Franklin Delano RooseveltGOP - Grand Old PartyFOB - Freight on Board

New Deal > NRA’s Blue Eagle Photograph, 1934

New Deal > CCC Worker Photograph, 1930

New Deal > Farm Holiday, 1930 and Archibald Willard, The Spirit of ‘76, 1876

The Dust Bowl > Dust Storm Approaching Startford, Texas, 1930s

The Dust Bowl > Map of Erosion and Dust on the Plains

The Dust Bowl > Traveling from South Texas to the Arkansas Delta, 1936

FSA > Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, March 1936

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, Steer Skull, Pennington County, South Dakota 1936

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull on dry sun-baked earth

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull, cows grazing in the background

FSA > Walker Evans, Burroughs Photographs, Hale County, Alabama, 1936

Second New Deal > Social Security Poster, 1936

Second New Deal > Works Progress Administration poster

1936 Elections > Literary Digest and Gallup polls

January 1936 Gallup PollBy Income

Roosevelt LandonUpper third 41% 59%Lower third 70 30Reliefers 82 18

October 1936 Gallup PollFarmers

Roosevelt 52.6%Landon 42.1%

WomenRoosevelt 51.4%Landon 44.8%

Young People (21–24 Years)Roosevelt 57.4%Landon 38.4%

ReliefersRoosevelt 78.8%Landon 14.0%

Literary Digest Final Poll

Landon 57%Roosevelt 43States for Landon 32States for FDR 16

A.I.P.O. (Gallup) Final Poll

Roosevelt 55.7%Landon 44.3States for FDR 40States for Landon 6On the line 2

Election ResultsRoosevelt 61%Landon 49%States for FDR 46States for Landon 2

1936 Elections > Percentage vote for Roosevelt in black districts, 1932 and 1936

Labor > Wagner Act, 1935: United Automobile Workers poster addressing Ford workers

Labor > Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times, 1936

Labor > A CIO poster quoting FDR

Labor > The rise in union membership

Labor > Strike patterns

Labor > Sit-down strike in Flint, MI

Labor > UAW organizers Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen pose for press photographers, River Rouge Plant, May 26, 1937

Labor > They were approached by Ford Service Department men

Labor > Ford men attacked

Labor > Reuther and Frankensteen immediately after the incident

Labor > Women’s sit-down strike in a Goody Nut Shop, 1937

Labor > Sit-down strike cartoon, New York World-Telegram, March 1937

Labor > CIO photomagazine, Photo-History, July 1937

Backlash > Memorial Day Massacre, May 29, 1937

Backlash > The Hilo Massacre, August 1, 1938

Court Packing > Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 1935

• A small company - small firms objected the most to limits on hours and wages

• Charles Evans Hughes for the majority: “Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.”

• Congress cannot relegate power to the executive branch, even in an emergency

• NRA infringes on “freedom of contract,” through industrial price and wage codes

Court Packing > “Fall In!,” Richmond Times Dispatch, 1937

Court Packing > “He Just Ain’t Fast Enough,” Brooklyn Citizen, 1937

Court Packing > “Qualifying Test,” New York Herald Tribune, 1937

Court Packing > “Step by Step,” Buffalo News, 1937

New Deal > Anti-Roosevelt cartoon, 1938

FDR’s Critics > Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin

• Populist critics of President Roosevelt• Long - Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator; the rich should “share wealth”• Coughlin - Catholic priest,

• Both used radio effectively• Long - the rich should “share wealth” (as Kingfish from Amos’n’Andy show)• Coughlin - sermons, attacked “money changers,” but also socialists

• Both had large following in the early 1930s• Long - 8 million members of Share Our Wealth Clubs• Coughlin - 40 million listeners in 1930

• At first support FDR, then disillusioned• Long - till 1933 as U.S. Senator (Democrat)• Coughlin - till 1935 through sermons on the radio

• Long shot in 1935, used for the main character in Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men• Coughlin turned anti-semitic and conservative after FDR’s reelection in 1936, ordered by his bishop to cease all political activity in 1940

FDR’s Critics > Huey Long, My First Days in the White House (1935)

Migration > John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

• Novel published in 1939

• Film in 1940 (closely follows the novel)

• Reinforced the belief that migrants fled the dust storms

• In fact, they fled for varied reasons, including drought, falling agricultural prices, and mechanization of agriculture

• 16,000 farmers fled dust storms

• 400,000 migrated, from a larger area in the Southwest

• Famous scene: farmer confronts a man who is about to level his house, used the plight of farmers to convey a sense of unfocused outrage shared by many others during the Depression - people couldn’t figure out who was to blame for the disaster

Politics and Movies > Screwball comedies

Frank Capra, Meet John Doe, 1941

My Man Godfrey, 1936

Politics and Movies > The Marx Brothers, Duck Soup, 1933

Politics and Radio > Orson Welles, “War of the Worlds,” 1938

Popular Front > Artists who were affiliated with the movement

Orson Welles Charlie Chaplin

Duke Ellington

Frank Capra

Dorothea Lange John Steinbeck

Popular Front > Scottsboro March announcement, Daily Worker, 1934

Disney Strike > “Walt Disney as the men who work for him see him. They portray him as unhappy because the strike is successful.” PM (1941)

Disney Strike > “Under the mask of the American Society of Screen Cartoonists, strikers claim is a company union,” PM (1941)

Disney Strike > “How a guy feels the first time he pickets. Most strikers were never union members before.” PM (1941)

Disney Strike > “The striking screen cartoon guild follows the difficult road of union organization, leaving alleged company union behind.” PM (1941)

Disney Strike > “Here is the artist’s version of an ideal picket. The Disney workers make the ideal striker; there are mighty few labor disputes in which just about every striker can make his own picket sign.” PM (1941)

Disney Strike > Life of an animator, as the public imagines it and in reality, without union protection. PM (1941)

Disney Strike > “It’s OK for the seven dwarfs to whistle while they work, but not the girls who work for Disney. Discipline is strict. PM (1941)